Syncing contacts is the first major issue. If I sync with Windows Contacts then everything works perfectly and the contacts appear. If I use Outlook however OutlookSyncDevice crashes every single time. I'm going to hook in and debug it but I suspect it's linked to Outlook Connector and MobileMe not playing nice. I've no intention of turning off Outlook Connector so that could mean bye bye MobileMe.

Before I jump however lets look at the calendar. Well it's awful. I've tested multiple scenarios with it and so far I'm having no joy with Outlook. In this case I can't even test it with Windows Calendar because for some reason Apple won't support it. I'm now looking at Windows Live Calendar and the cost of using it seems to be perfectly justifiable compared with the cost of using a badly substandard MobileMe.

On a quick note what about the online applications? Well I first used them on OSX and found them pretty useful and responsive. There's nothing really new in what they offer but they are simple enough to use. Move over to Windows and again there's issues. The service doesn't work properly with IE7, I'm very interested to test it with IE8 to see how well it works. You even get an arrogant warning that blames this on IE7 but remember that if Google can develop for IE then you would expect Apple to be able to. So what are the services like on Firefox? Well they work but they're slow and if you're a Firefox user then I'm afraid you can't get your bookmarks synced even though it's one of the support Windows browsers. Weird? Well not really because there's a browser that happens to display the services and let you sync the bookmarks, guess which one? That's right the downright hideous Safari. MobileMe is not a good reason to use Safari, nothing is a good reason to use it in fact. So the online services aren't sitting well for Windows either even though they are meant to be platform independent, kinda the point of the "cloud" concept I would've thought.

The final scenario and the realisation I had was that if I wanted MobileMe to work even a little on the Windows side then I would probably have to abandon my current email accounts and make sure that Outlook is only hooked up MobileMe. I'm not doing it. I've no interest in doing it. I'm sticking with my Windows Live address and services so I'm guessing it's going to have to be goodbye to MobileMe. Let's face it Live Mesh offers a great online storage option along with Office Live Workspace and SkyDrive. There's nothing at all wrong with Live Mail and if I ever decide to sign up to MSN Premium account I'll get calendar sync but lets face it, is it really that important? What about push? Well since it's on a 15 minute delay I can get my Live Mail forwarded to my GMail account and get my N95 to sync every 15 minutes for free. That's a Microsoft flaw however. I shouldn't have to. Live Mail needs IMAP or POP asap.

So what's the lesson from all this? Well I think it's pretty obvious. Computers are still not even close to being user friendly. There's so much infighting and "nerdy" arguments between Microsoft and Apple users, to name but two, that we can't simply get an integrated system that is user friendly. Users don't want to have to understand all the stuff that's going on under the hood. They simply want to be able to sign up to their email, select what they want to sync with and when they look at their Nokia phone they want the same contact list as their email account has and at the moment that is not being offered. It's not just Apple, Google and Microsoft that are to blame for this but they have a lot to answer for. There's room for more than one company in the technology world but only when the systems easily integrate. There's plenty of car companies making money why can't the same be true for IT? Imagine a world were there was a different driving test for each make of car. Then one company would dominate simply due to people not wanting the hassle. I want to see real system integration between the major companies because one will never win out over the rest and the bitter cat fighting is just hurting the consumer. Also lets face it people are sticking to Microsoft because it's familiar and that's a hard habit to break. It's no coincidence that Apple released Boot Camp and Apple hardware sales really started to rise. MobileMe was in the position to really breakdown a few barriers and show that Apple can develop quality software for a different platform in the same way as Microsoft have built Office and Messenger for Mac. I'm not sure they actually can. iTunes is weak as is MobileMe. Lets see something better guys because I'm getting fed up waiting around for you.

Labels: Apple, iPhone, iPod Touch, iTunes, Live Mesh, Mac OS X, Microsoft, Mobile Me, N95, Nokia, Office Live, Windows Live, Windows Vista

I've been quite complimentary to Apple over the last few days and I was fully ready to accept that perhaps they had their game together. Today however has been an absolute nightmare for me in terms of Apple software. I signed up to Mobile Me when I got my first opportunity and got it setup on the Mac with virtually no problems. Everything seemed to sync and play ball. Then I discovered that the web apps were down. Well no big deal it's the first day and they're probably being pounded so I'm happy to wait and decided to get my PC setup. This is where the trouble started.

Trying to sync Outlook 2007, a supported application, with Mobile Me was a horrible experience. The Outlook Sync Client kept crashing and therefore failing to sync correctly. After some investigation I discovered that this was down to an issue with my contacts. So I wiped my Outlook, and therefore Windows Live, contact list under the impression that I could sync again from Mobile Me. After all it did have the most up-to-date version of the contact list. That didn't happen. Instead the contacts did not sync back. Neither did the calendar for that matter. I was left with the task of recovering my contact list from my Windows Contacts. Thankfully the nice people in Redmond have made this task easy with the Windows Live Contacts importer tools. Maybe they foresaw the disaster Apple would have trying to play with the big boys and knew we'd coming running back to them.

Anyway back to the issues. With a newly repaired contact list I switched the Macbook back on to see if the iPod Touch update is out yet, it's not by the way and it's getting frustrating. The Macbook then chirped up with it's list of syncs that had to be done and most of them were blanks! They seemed to be failures from the feeble attempts to sync with Outlook and they remained in the sync log waiting to be written to somewhere. Anyway I'll clear them in a bit and then I have to give some real consideration to the idea of abandoning Mobile Me until the issues are sorted.

I don't want to come across completely negative though so I will say that some of the stuff that has been done with Mobile Me so far is excellent. The Web Apps look fantastic now they are up and running and really are a pleasure to use. The push functionality is something I look forward to testing on the iPod Touch when it gets it's new update, hopefully tomorrow and there are some great looking apps in the app store. It's extremely unfortunate that the teething problems of today have overshadowed an extremely promising service but for £60+ I want something that will operate when I need it and today it didn't.

Now how do I actually go about uninstalling Mobile Me from Vista anyway??

Labels: Apple, Live Mesh, Macbook, Microsoft, Microsoft Office 2007, Mobile Me, Windows Vista

I'm probably the last person to blog about this but I'm going to do it anyway. Microsoft has announced the availability of Live Mesh. This is Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie's 'big' project. The build up for this started back in October 2005. Mary Jo Foley has the following top 10 things to know on her blog:

1. The definition. As has become the norm with so many of its Software + Services products and strategies, Microsoft isn’t the best at coming up with a succinct Live Mesh definition. The closest I found (in a Live Mesh reviewer’s guide) was this: “Live Mesh is a ’software-plus-services’ platform and experience from Microsoft that enables PCs and other devices to ‘come alive’ by making them aware of each other through the Internet, enabling individuals and organizations to manage, access, and share their files and applications seamlessly on the Web and across their world of devices.” If I were in charge of defining Live Mesh, I think I’d go with “a Software + Services platform for synchronization and collaboration.”

2. The codename(s). Prying codename confirmation out of anyone at Microsoft these days is a chore. But I did get a couple of Softies to admit that Live Mesh is the instantiation of Microsoft’s Windows Live Core strategy. “Horizon” was the codename for the build of Live Mesh that Softies have been testing internally, officials added. (Hat tip to the LiveSide.Net guys here for initially unearthing these codenames, not to mention the whole Live Mesh concept, earlier than anyone else out there.)

3. The team. So who’s behind Live Mesh, other than Ozzie? A team of about 100 is considered the core Live Mesh group, said Jeff Hansen, General Manager of Service Marketing. Given the connection between Windows Live Core and Live Mesh (mentioned in Talking Point 2), it seems as though a lot of Microsoft’s heavy hitters have had a hand in Live Mesh. The Live Mesh team is part of Microsoft’s Live Platform Services unit under David Treadwell, which has 400 folks in its ranks, Hanson said. Live Platform Services is one of the four “Live platform outlined by Ozzie last year.

4. The buzzwords. All the new requisite Microsoft checkboxes get a tick. Live Mesh is open to developers (not just .Net ones). It’s going to be cross-platform and cross-browser, the Softies say. It will be based on standard protocols and feeds — HTTP, RSS, REST, ATOM, JSON and FeedSync. And it’s chock full of Web 2.0 goodness, with a Facebook-like news feed about your contacts and your devices and lots of “social graph” info built in from the get-go.

5. The guts. I am an unabashed fan of architectural diagrams. Microsoft’s pictures of Live Mesh don’t disappoint. At the base level (click on the diagram at right to see full size) Live Mesh builds on the cloud storage, management, service and provisioning and computational fabric that other Microsoft Live services use. On top of that, Live Mesh uses the same identity, synchronized storage and connectivity services that Microsoft uses for other Live offerings. The “platform” services (a k a the “developer stack”) include the new Mesh Framework, as well as both a cloud and a client software run-time Mesh Operating Environment (MOE). Live Mesh “experiences” from Microsoft and third-party providers will build on top of these layers. (Thanks to Ori Amiga, Group Program Manage for the Live Development Platform, for spending a lot of time walking me through this.)

6. What about sync? Wasn’t Live Mesh supposed to be all about sync? Early descriptions of Horizon/Live Mesh focused on the service’s online/offline and cross-device/folder synchronization capabilities. At Microsoft Mix ‘08 in March, the Softies made it seem as though Microsoft’s Synchronization Framework and FeedSync would be the most important elements of the vague device and social meshes outlined by Ozzie. FeedSync is definitely one building block of Live Mesh (as one can see in this architectural diagram showing the Live Mesh developer stack). And synchronized storage is a key building block of the platform/service. Instead of relying on many of the existing synchronization and collaboration products/technologies that Microsoft offers today — things like FolderShare, Windows live SkyDrive, Office Live Workspace, etc. — the Live Mesh team seems to be building its platform pretty much from scratch.

7. What about Silverlight? Even though the Live Mesh team went out of its way to emphasize that Microsoft sees Live Mesh as an open platform, and not just one designed to appeal to the Windows/.Net choir, both Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere (Silverlight) are key elements of the Live Mesh developer stack (a diagram of which — here on the left — can be enlarged to full size by clicking on it). Support for Flash, Cocoa, JavaScript and other non-Microsoft-centric technologies is there, too. But given Live Mesh is from Microsoft, I’d wager Silverlight applications and services will look and work better as Live Mesh endpoints than apps/services built on and for Mac OSX/Safari, Linux and Mozilla ones.

8. Live Mesh-isms. In addition to the aforementioned MOE (Mesh Operating Environment), other Mesh-centric concepts that will be important to developers working with early iterations of Live Mesh include: Mesh Bar, a “fly-out” adjunct to Internet Explorer that will provide you with notifications and activity updates on your devices/folders; Live Remote Desktop, an extension of Windows Remote Desktop, giving you the ability to directly access and control other devices within your mesh; Live Desktop, a user’s view of his/her cloud storage mesh; Mesh Object, a feed or collection of feeds (member feeds, news feeds, custom feeds); and the “ring,” which is all of the devices in/on your mesh.

9. Consumer vs. business. Live Mesh the service is definitely starting out as a consumer play for Microsoft. In describing the kinds of scenarios users might rely on Live Mesh to provide, Microsoft execs mentioned being able to share photos across devices and with preselected contacts. In the near term, Live Mesh will support PCs and Web browsers. As time goes on, it sounds like Microsoft expects it to work on/with portable media players, gaming consoles, TVs, printers and more. Live Mesh will allow users to choose to sync home PCs and personal devices with work PCs. But Microsoft also foresees a broader scenario, with Live Mesh being customized by various Microsoft development teams, as well as third-party ones, to be able to sync/share line-of-business data. Someday.

10. The timing. Microsoft is opening up a technology preview (pre-beta) to 10,000 testers this week. By the time the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC) rolls around in late October, Microsoft is hoping to be able to offer the Live Mesh service to a broader set of beta testers. The Softies also are promising around the PDC time frame more information on how the Live Mesh framework (Mesh FX) fits in with the Windows Live Developer Platform (Live Contacts, Live Mail, Live Messenger and other related application programming interfaces) that the Softies already have started making available to developers. And details also are allegedly coming at the PDC about how users will be able to store Live Mesh data and information on their own servers, not just in Microsoft’s datacenter. Hansen said Microsoft will provide a way for developers to “go back in and mesh-enable existing applications.” No word (yet) on how that will work. And no word on when Microsoft hopes to make the final version of Live Mesh available to any/all interested parties.

Labels: Live Mesh, Mary Jo Foley

I'm on the waiting list for Live Mesh but is there anyone out there who has an invite? I'm looking forward to giving this a try.

Labels: Live Mesh